Skip to main content

star wars - Was the Millennium Falcon too slow?


I've always been puzzled by the speeds of space craft in Star Wars. The Millennium Falcon was said to travel at "point 5 beyond the speed of light" - which I guess is 1.5c:



HAN: She'll make point five beyond the speed of light. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself.



And it was said by Han Solo to be the fastest ship in the fleet.



HAN: Look. I want you to take her. I mean it. Take her. You need all the help you can get. She's the fastest ship in the fleet.




But at that speed it will take years to travel between solar systems.


Is this a mistake in the Star Wars universe?



Answer



Yes. This is a mistake in the Star Wars universe. George Lucas had no understanding of space travel or physics. Which is why his starfighters swoop about the way World War II fighter planes did.


In modern explanation the "past lightspeed" bit has been retconned away. Instead there are the hyperdrive classes with a reverse scale. The higher the number the slower the ship. So a Class 1 hyperdrive is one of the fastest, but the Millennium Falcon has a 0.5 class hyperdrive. Twice as fast as a Class 1. Just how fast a Class 1 is is never really explained.


Though if you really want to go into it, get some of the role-playing books. They'll have charts for travel between star systems (and possibly distances). You may be able to figure out how fast a class 1 is supposed to be from that.


More information: Hyperdrive on Wikia


[edit] Okay this is a ridiculously rough calculation. I went and pulled out my old WEG RPG book and looked at the space travel section. It didn't have a map or distances or anything -- one of them does, but I don't have the time to find it now -- but it did make this statement:



Even with a well traveled hyperspace route the fastest ships, such as the Millennium Falcon, would take several months to traverse the whole diameter of the galaxy.




Elsewhere the Galaxy was quoted as being 120,000 light years in diameter. Using this we can make a really rough guess at how fast the Falcon is, and from that, what the classes really mean. So we'll assume "several" is 6 months. Using that we can find that a class 1/2 hyperdrive would travel at about 28 light years per hour. So a class one's speed is about 14 light years per hour.


I'll find that map and do a better one later. I'll note that the book does say that well traveled hyperspace routes, such as trade routes, can take significantly less time than less traveled routes. Why that would be, I dunno, but it hints that there is more going on to hyperspace than simply traveling faster than light. [/edit]


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more